BELOW (first three): Freeborn working on Peter Sellers, Freeborn in his lab, working on Chewbacca heads

All photos 'MA' archives

Posted: Wednesday February 06, 2013

Updated Feb. 13, 2013

Stuart Freeborn, whose pioneering work on 2001: A Space Odyssey and the early Star Wars films earned him a place in make-up history, has died at the age of 98.

Born
in 1914 in London, England, Freeborn designed and applied make-up for
scores of film classics, including three starring British actor Sir Alec
Guinness: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Oliver Twist and Star Wars. Freeborn's additional film credits include The Mouse That Roared, The Alphabet Murders, Murder on the Orient Express, the Superman trilogy and The Omen, for which he created vicious fiberglass-and-foam rubber dogs covered in synthetic fur. For Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,
Freeborn transformed Peter Sellers into three different characters
using a bald-cap technique that he would replicate in later work.

But space may have been the final frontier for Freeborn, who created several fantastical creatures for 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Star Wars franchise. He has described his work on 2001,
another Kubrick film, as one of the most challenging of his career,
requiring masks for multiple actors over nearly three months. He faced
an additional headache working with the live chimps Kubrick wanted for
realism.

Freeborn did extensive make-up design work and creature creations for the original 1977 Star Wars, among them the seven-foot apelike Chewbacca; he also worked on Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). In 1978, he shared a Saturn Award with Rick Baker for Best Make-Up for Star Wars (1977). In 1984, he shared another, with Phil Tippett, for Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. That same year, he and Tippett were nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Film Award for Jedi.

British make-up artist Nick Dudman, who trained with Freeborn and assisted him on the Yoda character for The Empire Strikes Back before doing make-up design for the Harry Potter film series, said, "His main contribution was that he took on quite a few people over the years and taught them—he was one of the few make-up artists who did. I certainly owe him my start in the industry. As teacher, initially, he was quite difficult. He would tell you how to do something, but would hold something back. But once you proved yourself, his enthusiasm would get the better of him—he was like a little school kid. He loved passing it on.

"He was certainly one of the most inventive, creative artists we've had in this country, so he was a pioneer. He pushed the technology of what we do, much in the way Dick Smith did, so in that way he was quite unique. The length of time he spent doing his job was such that his knowledge was completely unique, and because of that, his contribution was unique. He comes from a period where you had to invent everything yourself."

Fellow artist Neill Gorton, of Doctor Who fame, agreed.

"To understand just how good Stuart Freeborn was you just have to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and watch the 'Dawn of Man' sequence and remind yourself that this was work created in 1967," he said. "That's 45 years ago! Not only did he and his team create an ape with a hand-tied stretch-fur suit and animatronic mask, he created a whole troop of them, and they were the first to do anything like this on this scale! When the film was released, most people who saw it didn't know they were fake. It was assumed they were chimpanzees and not men in suits.

"That's how I always saw Stuart's work; Stuart did real. Others did make-up effects, prosthetics and animatronics, but Stuart did real. His character make-ups always look real. His Fagin on Alec Guinness for Oliver Twist pushed the limits into almost caricature but still felt real, as did the numerous characters he created for Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and on the other movies he did with Sellers. Even his most unbelievable creations—an 8-foot, apelike, spaceship-flying sidekick and a big-eared, diminutive, mystical green goblin-type character—somehow passed for real, and we, the audience, just accepted them as living, breathing entities. That's what Stuart did."

London-based make-up artist Angela Holthuis and photographer Izabela Habur set a challenge for themselves: Habur
asked Holthuis, a fashion pro, to create “a small story with bold looks
within a small time frame, to test out how far we [could] push
ourselves creatively,” Holthuis said.

Make-Up Artist magazine is now accepting student competition
applications for the 2009 Los Angeles International Make-Up Artist
Trade Show. The themes for this year are Gothic and X-Men Mutants. The competition is open to students of a recognized make-up school and
to those who graduated 12 months prior to the competition. Make-Up Artist will only accept competition entries postmarked by May 22, 2009.

If you like Prescriptives products, you’d better stock up while you
can: On Sept. 17, Estée Lauder Companies announced it will stop
production and global wholesale distribution of the brand by Jan. 31,
2010. The brand will still be sold online at www.prescriptives.com
while inventory lasts.